Looking Forward

I wanted to share an oddball title with you today - "Looking Forward: A Dream of the United States of the Americas in 1999." It was written by Arthur Bird, ex-Vice Consul-General of America, Haiti, in 1899. Bird attempted to transport the reader 100 years into the future, or his very idealized vision of the future. It's an interesting political and social fossil:

13 comments:

Fantastic find!!! 'Looking Forward' is one of the responses to Edward Bellamy's 1888 novel 'Looking Backward, 2000-1887,' a utopian socialist novel about a Bostonian who wakes up in the year 2000. Bellamy's book was one of the bestsellers of the late 19th century.

Wow. I wonder if I could locate a copy for my dad...assuming that this copy will be Lisa Shafer's if it's within my range! What an interesting book, and SusieBookworm, thanks for the additional backstory on this volume!

Wow. I wonder if I could locate a copy for my dad...assuming that this copy will be Lisa Shafer's if it's within my range! What an interesting book, and SusieBookworm, thanks for the additional backstory on this volume!

I've read the Edward Bellamy book, 'Looking Forward' after coming across it at the exhibition of Sci-Fi at the British Museum. It's really well written, and (I think) is cited as pre-inventing the credit card.

Alas, some of its views on women were less imaginative than the rest of the book..